Road rage case: Man convicted along with Sidhu denies presence at crime scene

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 22

Rupinder Singh Sandhu -- who was convicted along with Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu in a 1988 road rage case - on Thursday denied his presence at the crime scene and questioned the Punjab and Haryana High Court's decision to reverse the trial court's acquittal verdict.

"I was not present at the scene I have been dragged in the case," senior counsel R Basant told a bench of Justice J Chelameswar and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul which is hearing appeals filed by Sidhu and Sandhu in the 30-year-old case.

"Have you ever taken a selfie with a cricketer," asked Justice Chelameswar in a lighter vein.

Referring to testimony of two of the witnesses rejected by the trial court as "untrustworthy", Basant said, "The trial court had rightly disbelieved the testimony of these two witnesses The High Court unjustifiably overturned the trial court's finding without any satisfactory explanation."

"PW 3 (prosecution witness no. 3) and PW 4 didn't know me. They had referred to me as a clean shaven person (Mona) and without there being any evidence that Mona became Accused no. 2 (Sandhu)," Basant argued. As his arguments remained inconclusive, he will resume on Tuesday.

Earlier, senior counsel RS Cheema concluded his arguments on behalf of the cricketer-turned-politician and assailed the high court's verdict. Cheema had on Tuesday questioned the prosecution theory that Gurnam died due to the injuries caused in the assault. The victim died due to cardiac arrest and not because of the alleged physical assault by the accused duo, he had told the bench.

Thirty years after an elderly man died in a road rage case allegedly involving Navjot Singh Sidhu, the Supreme Court had on Tuesday commenced hearing final arguments on his appeal challenging a Punjab and Haryana High Court verdict convicting him.

According to the prosecution, Sidhu and Sandhu were allegedly present in a Gypsy parked near Sheranwala Gate Crossing on December 27, 1988 while Gurnam was on his way to a bank in a Maruti car with two others. As the deceased asked the Gypsy occupants to give them way, he was beaten up by the accused who fled the scene. Gurnam was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead.

Sidhu and his friend Rupinder Singh Sandhu were initially tried for murder but the trial court in September 1999 acquitted the cricketer-turned-politician. However, the high court reversed the verdict and held him and co-accused Rupinder Singh Sandhu guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder for the death of Gurnam Singh in Patiala 1988.

The high court sentenced them to three-year imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on the convicts. He was given bail in 2007 by the top court, which had also stayed his conviction to enable him contest Lok Sabha by polls from Amritsar that was caused by resignation following the conviction.

In his appeal filed in the top court in January 2007, Sidhu had contended that the high court should not have reversed the trial court's order of acquittal without there being any compelling reasons and circumstances.